‘Distant Light’ is Renée Fleming’s first foray into the hypnotic world of Scandinavian music. For her first new studio album in three years she has chosen to inspire and provoke with a daring mix of music.

Björk has always excelled at transforming intimate moments into compelling art that, no matter how grand its scope, retains its emotional truth. This was especially true of Vulnicura, an album that spelled out its philosophy in its title: Vulnerability is the only way to heal from pain — even if that openness may have led to getting hurt in the first place. Björk expanded on the album's wounded but resilient beauty with Vulnicura Strings, which emphasized the music's tiny glimmers of hope with acoustic warmth, and with Vulnicura Live, which transformed it into a spectacle in keeping with her other tours.

Bachelorette is the 1997 single by Björk Guðmundsdóttir, known primarily simply as Björk. This is the second of two different CD5's but I only have the second one. This features seven different mixes of the song, including mixes by Alec Empire, Grooverider, Mark Bell, and RZA.

Though Björk has written music for films before, her collaboration with Matthew Barney on Drawing Restraint 9 is a much deeper and more natural pairing, which makes sense, considering that they're partners in life (and now in art). Björk's pieces for the film reflect its fusions of the contemporary with the ancient, and the organic with the technological – themes that she has dealt with in her own work, especially on later albums like Medúlla…

"Hidden Place" is a song by Icelandic recording artist Björk, taken from her fifth album, Vespertine (2001). It was written and produced by Björk. "Hidden Place" was released as a lead single from Vespertine on August 3, 2001…

"Pagan Poetry" is the second single from singer Björk's album Vespertine. The single peaked at number 38 in the UK and number 12 in Canada. It was written and produced by Björk with additional production by Marius de Vries and mixed by Mark "Spike" Stent…

Selmasongs: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack Dancer in the Dark is, and is not, a Björk album. While it's filled with rampant creativity, startling emotional leaps, and breathtaking vocals and arrangements, it isn't as playful as her other albums, even 1997's relatively dark Homogenic. Instead, it presents Björk as Selma, her character from Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark: a Czech factory worker who is going blind but finds hope and refuge in the musicals she watches at the cinema…

Recorded at various performances on her 1997-'98 tour, this live collection features Bjork backed only by her collaborator Mark Bell (on various electronic instruments) and the Icelandic String Octet. This relatively spare instrumentation allows Bjork to take her songs down slightly different paths, while retaining the heart of the studio recordings…

After cathartic statements like Homogenic, the role of Selma in Dancer in the Dark, and the film's somber companion piece, Selmasongs, it's not surprising that Björk's first album in four years is less emotionally wrenching. But Vespertine isn't so much a departure from her previous work as a culmination of the musical distance she's traveled; within songs like the subtly sensual "Hidden Place" and "Undo" are traces of Debut and Post's gentle loveliness, as well as Homogenic and Selmasongs' reflective, searching moments…

By the late '90s, Björk's playful, unique world view and singular voice became as confining as they were defining. With its surprising starkness and darkness, 1997's Homogenic shatters her "Icelandic pixie" image. Possibly inspired by her failed relationship with drum'n'bass kingpin Goldie, Björk sheds her more precious aspects, displaying more emotional depth than even her best previous work indicated…